First album new edition on Rhino Handmade

[quote="ianianian"]

ashitanoramen wrote:

ggriffin wrote:

Which brings up another tangent - am I the only one that thinks Asthma Attack is a wonderful track, beyond the historical interest?

.

Really? I like the stooges very much - so much I spend a lot of money on discs that don't play right, but Asthma Attack wonderful??? It's indulgent nonesense. It's great to hear, of course, but still indulgent nonsense. The fact it has taken 40 years to see the light of day tells you something, no?

Ian

It certainly tells us something about the record company that finally decided to release it.

mc wrote:

This has been added to the Rhino page at the bottom of the release details:

PRODUCTION NOTE:

We at Rhino Handmade wanted to shed some light on the questions that have been raised regarding several of the bonus tracks on our Collector’s Edition of The Stooges’ debut album.

The John Cale Mixes that were featured on the 2005 Deluxe Edition of the album were pitch corrected from the existing mix reel, which is the only existing master in our vaults. For the new Collector’s Edition, no pitch correcting was done and we left the songs exactly as they are found on the master. The same master was used for both releases.

Firstly, this seems to put to rest the rumour on this forum that the 2005 issue used a cassette of the Cale mixes.

Secondly, they pitch corrected in 2005 but why on Earth did they choose not to pitch correct this time? I mean if it was a choice then surely there must be a very good reason? The only good reason I can think of is that Cale meant them to be that way but I can't quite believe that.

They forgot to tell us that they had not pitch corrected, they now forget to explain why they did not. It doesn't really add up, yet. It should have been made clear in the booklet – more use than the (mostly) waffle-filled essay that did they put in there.

Reading the Production Note again, it just sounds like an attempt at damage limitation. 'For the new Collector’s Edition, no pitch correcting was done and we left the songs exactly as they are found .' So what? It says nothing we don't already know. It doesn't contradict or lay to rest the idea that it was a mistake rather than a deliberate act. Like – 'We decided not to pitch correct for this release because...'

I got my corrected CDs today. The text is correct and matches the actual tracks, the color of the CDs has changed from orange to red but ---

the speed has NOT been corrected.

I'm going to shoot them an email and see what they say.

rev. mike wrote:

I just got this reply from Rhino when I asked them to explicitly state one way or another if the John Cale mixes would be corrected on the replacement discs:

Dear Mr. ______,

Thank you for contacting Rhino Customer Service.

We would like to inform you that the replacement discs that are going to be sent will not have any reasserting issues, and the John Cale mixes will play at the right speed.

So I guess that they are saying that the wrong speed is the "right" speed.

L A M E !!!

I'm going to wait and see if they are going to indeed send me a speed corrected copy as the customer service rep stated and if it doesn't show up, I'm pushing for a refund, or it's going up on eBay. Completely unacceptable.

i preordered my copy and it hasn't arrived. after much customer services email, rhino have agreed to send me a replacement copy, i got the email yesterday that one has been shipped ups ground and should be with me in 5 days. i understand that service is for internal us mail, am i correct...because i live in the uk.
when i contacted cale's office at the start of this saga the only reply i received was that it was too late to do anything about the speed issue as the discs had been pressed. i do not know if cale had received an advance copy and i do not believe the tapes of the cale mix were supplied by cale himself. i will send cale's office an mp3 i have of one of the tracks (Dog) maybe he will listen...maybe i will get a response, but the guy is very busy in the studio.

RE some of the "difficulties" with this set (slow speed, ordering...), maybe we are being too polite, and should take a leaf out of MC5's book ("fuck Hudson's!"), and be saying loud

FUCK RHINO's!



that's my puerile post for the day anyway

Has anyone compared the two versions of Dog like I mentioned? Where did that tape damage come from? And why have the channels been flipped? Suspicious.

i only have an mp3 handmade cale mix, i cant hear that the channels have been flipped, guitar on left and drums on the right on both new and 2005 issue, but yes i hear the tape damage on the handmade issue after about 40 secs on I wanna be your dog... which is not on the 2005 issue, i think we will fall suffers with tape damage too

gazatthebop wrote:

i only have an mp3 handmade cale mix, i cant hear that the channels have been flipped, guitar on left and drums on the right on both new and 2005 issue, but yes i hear the tape damage on the handmade issue after about 40 secs on I wanna be your dog... which is not on the 2005 issue, i think we will fall suffers with tape damage too

The channels are the same on my copies. Worth noting maybe that the 2010 tracks seem louder than the 2005 versions (along with the machine hum which sounds a lot like mains hum rather than tape noise). Now where did that come from – surely it would not have been on the original mix reels?

I can easily imagine that the damage has occurred at the last digitisation in 2005, in which case they screwed up the only copy that they have. I wonder though – did they digitise the whole album in 2005? We know that they also used 2 Cale mixes on singles so I guess (and hope) that they did. I think I'd prefer a whole album of the versions they made in 2005 than what we have now – they sound better in quality and naturalness.

Reading this saga has saved me money, that's for sure. I was going to scrape together enough to buy this set eventually but now I won't bother. I already have the 2005 reissue so it seemed like a lot of money for a few extra tracks. Now it turns out a good lot of those tracks aren't even worth it. So instead of buying the set, I'll be quite happy with my friend's mislabelled discs when he gets his replacements ...

Peace.

LunarTunes wrote:

Reading this saga has saved me money, that's for sure. I was going to scrape together enough to buy this set eventually but now I won't bother. I already have the 2005 reissue so it seemed like a lot of money for a few extra tracks. Now it turns out a good lot of those tracks aren't even worth it. So instead of buying the set, I'll be quite happy with my friend's mislabelled discs when he gets his replacements ...

Peace.

I can't help wishing I was in the same boat as you amigo. Having sprung for it, I feel a right mug and not at all well disposed towards Rhino Handmade.

The explanation for using the slowed down versions (because that what's they are) is because they have used the masters exactly as they are is particularly irksome. Does this mean that old Cale felt the stooges sounded better on mogadon?



Ian

I just listened to the samples on the Rhino HM site and the slow speed is clearly a MISTAKE. As many here have said the tracks are all but unlistenable. NO WAY did Cale/The Stooges intend the album to sound that way. I think it is probably a mistake in the playback/analogue-to-digital transfer. Analogue tape was recorded at all kinds of speeds back in the day. Check this from Wikipedia:

Tape speeds

In general, the faster the speed the better the sound quality. In addition to faithfully recording higher frequencies and increasing the magnetic signal strength and therefore the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N), higher tape speeds spread the signal longitudinally over more tape area, reducing the effects of defects in or damage to the medium. Slower speeds conserve tape and are useful in applications where sound quality is not critical.

* 15/16ths of an inch per second (in/s) or 2.38 cm/s — used for very long-duration recordings (e.g. recording a radio station's entire output in case of complaints, aka "logging")
* 1⅞ in/s or 4.76 cm/s — usually the slowest domestic speed, best for long duration speech recordings
* 3¾ in/s or 9.52 cm/s — common domestic speed, used on most single-speed domestic machines, reasonable quality for speech and off-air radio recordings
* 7½ in/s or 19.05 cm/s — highest domestic speed, also slowest professional; used by most radio stations for "dubs", copies of commercial announcements; Through the early-mid 90's many stations could not handle 15 IPS.
* 15 in/s or 38.1 cm/s — professional music recording and radio programming
* 30 in/s or 76.2 cm/s — used where the best possible treble response is demanded, e.g., many classical music recordings

Speed units of inches per second or in/s are also abbreviated IPS. 3¾ in/s and 7½ in/s are the speeds that were used for (the vast majority of) consumer market releases of commercial recordings on reel-to-reel tape. 3¾ in/s is also the speed used in 8-track cartridges. 1⅞ in/s is also the speed used in Compact cassettes.)

end of quote

Who knows at what speed Cale recorded The Stooges (or made the dub that Rhino have)? Abviously Rhino's remastering engineer did not know the correct speed.

There is also a faint possibility that the mistake was made in the digital remastering stage. But that would indicate complete incompetence on the engineer's part.

The best way to deal with The Stooges Electra recordings for any limited edition/specialist releases would be to ...

... a) re-release the "Complete 'Fun House' Sessions" and ...
... b) release the "Complete 'The Stooges' Sessions" (including the Cale mix at the correct speed) and ...
... c) release the "Unganos" recording(s) as a stand alone set

But since Rhino was acquired by Warner in 2004 the release strategy of the label is probably no longer in the hands of music lovers. With the new "The Stooges" set a major label is once again playing into the hands of the bootleggers, who will probably re-master the Cale mix at the correct speed and put it out on vinyl. By the way has a speed-corrected version found its way onto the net, yet?

I found this on the 2005 version of "The Stooges":

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=8062

relevant passage:

MT: Were there any problems, such as sonic issues, you encountered while assembling the reissues?

Edmonds: Not really. The early John Cale mixes [for The Stooges] surfaced on a tape that was slightly worse for wear, but that’s about it. And we would have welcomed those mixes in even worse shape, I can tell you that!

That’s a very interesting tape. It was supplied by collector Jeff Gold. It contained the Stooges debut as we know it, followed by another version of the album — different mixes in a different sequence. As this tape was believed to have come from the collection of Danny Fields, it became obvious that this was the long-speculated-upon John Cale version of the album that the band rejected and remixed [with Elektra president Jac Holzman]. It was like the tape was an A-B exercise with the two versions of the album, perhaps just to check that the remixes were in fact superior.

Now, we could easily have just presented the Cale version of the album as our deluxe disc and left it at that. I’m sure nobody would have complained. But Bill and I wanted to make this edition as special as it could possibly be, especially considering how strong the Fun House counterpart was gonna be. We decided that we’d use the versions with alternate vocals, some of the extended versions, and then four of the original Cale mixes. There’s another of his mixes on the B-side of one of the two vinyl 45s the English are releasing, and another still on the B-side of the American single, so six of the eight Cale tracks will be out there. [NOTE: The 45s are as follow – in the UK, "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (alt version) b/w "Real Cool Time" (Cale mix) and "Down On The Street" (45 version) b/w "TV Eye" (box take 9); in the US, "1970" (mono 45 mix) b/w "Not Right" (Cale mix).]

We figure this makes for a good blend of treats and surprises, and in the process we answer the two principal questions Stooges fans have always wondered about the first album: One, what did the original album with longer versions of fewer songs — rejected by Jac Holzman, who asked for more material — sound like? And two, what did John Cale’s rejected mixes sound like? Even if the answers reveal that the right decisions were ultimately made in both instances, isn’t this the kind of illumination we look for in historical packages?

The only other difficulty we encountered, really, was with the artwork. The original notion was to present outtakes from each album’s photographic session, so the booklet would become a visual counterpart to the expanded album, as Fun House is, with Ed Caraeff’s photos. Unfortunately, first album photographer Joel Brodsky is in a dispute over the use of his work. I believe it centers on his Doors material, but the upshot was that we didn’t have access to any of his Stooges outtakes. I have some in my personal archive, and they’re wonderful. Rhino art director Greg Allen had to scurry around finding photos for the first album at the last minute, which he succeeded in doing admirably, albeit in black and white.

Thanks, Luzern.

"Now, we could easily have just presented the Cale version of the album as our deluxe disc and left it at that. I’m sure nobody would have complained. But Bill and I wanted to make this edition as special as it could possibly be..."

So they decided to release just four Cale-tracks on the CD? To make sure there would be complaints? Well people sure are complaining now.

"Edmonds: Not really. The early John Cale mixes [for The Stooges] surfaced on a tape that was slightly worse for wear, but that’s about it."

The fact that Edmonds mentions tape defects [in the 2005 interview] seems to indicate that for the 2010 release they went back to their original source, ignoring/forgetting tape defects and speed issues while for the 2005 release they apparently fixed those problems.

That makes sense to me!

One thing that doesn't make sense to me, is to preserve the original tape speed for the sake of autenticity; analogue tape recorders weren't precision clocks; when the tape is copied, it fairly normal for it to have moved up or down a little little bit in pitch. And that's when the tape is new; it's normal for old tape to stretch a little.

This is getting REALLY interesting. Hopefully, with more information being found about these mixes, Rhino will be forced to make a more complete statement eventually, although that might be asking too much. Regardless, to answer a question about speed-corrected versions of the Cale mixes circulating, yeah, there is a site with a version of the mixes, but I've since made a much better version and I'd be happy to discuss details privately. I'm not saying I'll give copies of this version out, though I'm not saying I won't . I'm sure you understand. Anyway, drop me a line if you would like to discuss "details".

This was a bit that caught my eye ...

"We decided that we’d use the versions with alternate vocals, some of
the extended versions, and then four of the original Cale mixes."

"Some" of the extended versions?

Listening to Cale's mix is actually painful to my ears as it's got such an extended, peircing high end. I'm now wondering if this tape was recorded with Dolby (A, I guess) and Rhino didn't play it back with Dolby when they transferred to digital (and may have even jacked the high end more). Anyone know of a Dolby A decoder plugin?

Also, I tried fixing the hum, but while it seems to be a mains hum, it's not just at 60hz. The noise extends up much further and removing all of it caused a good loss of body, midrange. So I just went with the standard 60hz hum removal, which got rid of the low hum that would have your woofers going crazy, but there is still a noise that can be heard in quiet parts. I myself prefer the overall 2010 sound (once speed corrected, of course) over the 2005 and for this reason. While they eliminated much of the hum sound (if I listen real closely, I can still hear that it's there), but this in turn stripped out way too much midrange and left a very hollow sound. And midrange is already not good on this mix.

I also have my own version in the works and plan to even try to patch in the Dog piece from the 2005 over the damage on the 2010. But only if a reasonable eq match can be done. I also fixed the huge dropdown in volume on the left channel in the middle of Dog. I can see looking at the waveform that this was fixed on the 2005.

Rhino did a real shitty job on this and is now handling it very shitily. If they have any future Stooges plans, they may wanna think about not pissing us all off. If they don't fix this, I will NOT buy another Rhino product. I don't give a shit about packaging, 7"ers of songs already on the CD, books, boxes, postcards or whatever other cheapy shit they add in to justify their big price mark ups. I just want the music and if they are gonna be like this, I'll get any future stuff copied from someone. I support bands/lables that support their fans/customers.

I am also a victim of this set. I purchased it just for the Cale mixes and noticed the error immediately. I am so frustrated. they claimed my new replacement discs would have the speed corrected and of course they are not. If anybody can point me in the right direction as to where I can download a speed corrected version online or e-mail them to me at slangeug@aol.com I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance for anyone's help.

Some have the replacement copies...does this have the cover/booklet/single or did rhino just send out the two replacement cd's?

gazatthebop wrote:

Some have the replacement copies...does this have the cover/booklet/single or did rhino just send out the two replacement cd's?

It's just two CDs in a clear jewel case.

johnthelawman wrote:

I'm now wondering if this tape was recorded with Dolby (A, I guess) and Rhino didn't play it back with Dolby when they transferred to digital (and may have even jacked the high end more). Anyone know of a Dolby A decoder plugin?

I'm not sure but mid-1969 seems pretty early for Dolby? IIRC it was invented in '66 but not commonly used until the early 1970's.

Dolby B was around before the Stooges 1st album...there is a famous case on Tim Buckley's Happy Sad album where the Dolby was left off by mistake by the engineer and they over-dubbed the hiss with the sound of the Pacific Ocean as Buckley refused to do another take, liking the one the engineer screwed up so much.